William The Conqueror: Problems After 1066

how did william controll enland i need lots of information aboutthe backgroung to 1066 and the conquest conext. also what were the problems facing william. how did he solve them.
what did william do in the short term and the long term.
thanks
please find the best you can this means a lot to me
thanks
nel

I have thought further on this one and feel that we can offer you some more help on the site as well. :lightbulb:

A brief synopsis of the whole 1066 'thing' might be:

Edward the Confessor, King of England dies without any children. Harold Godwinson who is the most powerful lord in England has himself made king. However William of Normandy has absolute belief in the fact that he should be the next king. This is because he believes that both Harold Godwinson and Edward the Confessor had promised him the throne of England. As far as William of Normandy is concerned his right to be king of England has been stolen from him.

That is why William invades in 1066. He does not see himself as some foreign prince simply stealing another country's throne. In his own view HE is the rightful king of England and Harold Godwinson is a liar and a thief who has taken the throne away from William's hands.

Of course William is not going to get the throne easily and Harold has no intention of just giving it up without a fight. Harold knows that William is likely to invade so waits for him to come. Of course armies in 1066 were not the same as now so after a few months of waiting on the Isle of Wight Harold's soldiers all go home to their farms; their service was up.

At this point things go very wrong for Harold as Harald Hardrada invades in the north of England to fight for the throne. Harold manages to defeat Harald, but in the mean time William lands on the south coast of England and Harold is forced to march his tired men back to the south at full speed. So when the Battle of Hastings start Harold faces lots of problems due to his exhausted soldiers.

The battle starts well for Harold but ends in disaster as William's superior tactics win the day. Harold is killed and William gets to be king. However we can all see that the English are hardly going to just turn around and say: "Right so our English king is dead and this French bloke is now in charge. OK let's just let that happen."

So William is going to have to force the English to accept his power over their country. This leads to the battles in the south of England, the march to London and the war against the rebellious English in the north. William does not think he can trust the English lords (he is of course correct in this assumption!) and so he takes away their lands and gives them to his friends and supporters from Normandy. This allows him to pay off all the knights and lords who came over from France with him to fight the English.

The perfect solution to William's problem of how to control England was found. He took away the land and power of the English nobility and gave this power and land to his own supporters who would run the country for him.

William was no mug and his plans were executed most excellently.

Now of course you need to fill in some of the details using the sites suggested, but this gives you a good overview. :lightbulb:

i read in the book 3 short term problems and 2 long term problems william had after becoming king....but i dont understand one of the long term problems and that was the one that says : many of the english lords do not want to accept william as king. william cannot trust them to keep their parts of the country under control. william has to find a way to keep the whole country underc ontrol? what i really want to know is what does he do????

that's a really good question to ask, you obviously really want to understand this topic.

i'll try to give a brief answer to this one;

Because William was French, an invador and had killed the English king, it was not really suprising that the English lords didn't like him. so a lot of them started to rebel against William and tried to overthrow him.

William sent his armies to crush the rebellions and took the land away from the English lords, giving it to his own soldiers and followers (that made him very popular with them!!!). this meanrt he now had people in place to control the country

BUT

the new French Lords were very unpopular as well so;

~ William encouraged them to build castles (Motte and Bailey castles at first, stone ones later) to protect themselves and to act as a base for their soldiers. details of this can be found here

~ he also set up the feudal system under which the english had to give taxes and promises of loyalty to their lords and to william in return for protection and land to farm, details of this can be found here

How very hard, because William didn;t particularly TRY to gain the trust of the English Lords.

He DID get crowned in Westminster Abbey, at which promised to keep the laws of the land.At first also he DID allow some 'more-loyal-than-others' English lords, such as Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, who had not fought him, to buy back their lands for money.

But:1. He took some land off ALL the lords and gave them to his followers.2. After the 1069 rebellion he systematically set about stripping even the loyal English lords of all their lands.3. He ruled by building castles and terrifying the local inhabitants into submission.4. North of York he conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing, after which he set up concentration camps and made the surviving English people, high and low, live in them as 'serfs'.

that's a really good question to ask, you obviously really want to understand this topic.

i'll try to give a brief answer to this one;

Because William was French, an invador and had killed the English king, it was not really suprising that the English lords didn't like him. so a lot of them started to rebel against William and tried to overthrow him.William sent his armies to crush the rebellions and took the land away from the English lords, giving it to his own soldiers and followers

(that made him very popular with them!!!). this meanrt he now had people in place to control the country

BUT

the new French Lords were very unpopular as well so;

~ William encouraged them to build castles (Motte and Bailey castles at first, stone ones later) to protect themselves and to act as a base for their soldiers. details of this can be found here

~ he also set up the feudal system under which the english had to give taxes and promises of loyalty to their lords and to william in return for protection and land to farm, details of this can be found here